Bossa Nova

[hungprep]

Please, everyone, feel free to jump in with your favorites (if you have any) anytime, but I'm going to start with just two selections from the classic album Getz/Gilberto from Stan Getz and João Gilberto in 1963…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So718wk426c&fmt=18"]Desafinado Getz/Gilberto[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8VPmtyLqSY&fmt=18"]The Girl from Ipanema Getz/Gilberto[/ame]


^ Featuring Stan Getz on tenor sax, Antonio Carlos Jobim (the composer of these songs) on piano, João Gilberto on guitar and vocals, and his wife Astrud Gilberto on English vocals…
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[hungprep]

The Girl from Ipanema, from 1964…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJkxFhFRFDA&fmt=18"]Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz on TV[/ame]
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[miaedu]

I'm going to love this thread!

 

[miaedu]

Gal Costa - Ensaio - "Coracao Vagabundo"

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct6lUaWTJG8[/ame]

 

[dancub]

I'm trying to post the vid, but it won't work.

 

[kontiki59]

Not exactly Bossa Nova but I love and have a copy of Della Reese's Cha Cha Cha album - Della does Cha Cha

 

[gaypiper]

I love Bossa Nova; I grew up listening to it. Did you know that Astrud Gilberto didn't make one thin dime off of "Girl from Ipanema?"

 

[hungprep]

^ I had no idea. I'd never heard that before, but I'm a relative newcomer to the music. Do you have any evidence you could cite?

For the time being, here are three more, classic songs from the historymaking album Getz/Gilberto with another of Astrud Gilberto's immensely popular (as I understand it), vocal performances…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-YnyZG8fNU&fmt=18"]Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars)[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt6rsHa88t0&fmt=18"]Pra machucar meu coração[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POXvY53pJcQ&fmt=18"]Só danço samba Getz/Gilberto[/ame]
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[hungprep]

^ The last three, remaining songs from that amazing, groundbreaking album…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgKr5KMN9cA&fmt=18"]Vivo sonhando (Dreamer) Getz/Gilberto[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlYPOEe9o9c&fmt=18"]Doralice Getz/Gilberto[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItfCtl29eUI&fmt=18"]O grande amor Getz/Gilberto[/ame]
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[hungprep]

Here are three collaborations with Stan Getz by Charlie Byrd, the virtuoso American classical/jazz guitarist and early champion of bossa nova (who actually introduced Stan Getz to the music), from the album Jazz Samba, recorded in 1962…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGfiAzPiYG4&fmt=18"]Desafinado Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd[/ame]


One Note Samba (Samba de uma nota só), also by Antonio Carlos ('Tom') Jobim…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-vlX8uRLMQ&fmt=18"]Samba de uma nota só Getz/Byrd[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_qFpB8gFjE&fmt=18"]Samba triste (by Baden Powell) Getz/Byrd[/ame]
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[hungprep]

Three more songs by Antonio Carlos 'Tom' Jobim, as performed by Charlie Byrd – the first from around 1962-63, the last two from much later in the guitarist's life…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVonSvPQh2o&fmt=18"]Meditação (Meditation) Charlie Byrd[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPyY80pUujE&fmt=18"]Corcovado The Charlie Byrd Trio[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAmeBBfzBBs&fmt=18"]Vou te contar (Wave) The Charlie Byrd Trio[/ame]


^ Live with Joe Byrd and Chuck Redd
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[hungprep]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6gDFsvTBi0&fmt=18"]Wave Antonio Carlos Jobim[/ame]


^ Vou te contar from his 1967, American album (with, it seems, nearly every jazz session player in LA at the time)…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WctZJcPwnOQ&fmt=18"]Wave Stan Getz Quartet[/ame]


^ With Albert Dailey, George Mraz and Billy Hart – from Danish TV, in Copenhagen, mid-1970s…
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[hungprep]

^^ Kewl! Thanks for posting. I've got more versions of the song Desafinado (Out-of-tune), coming up in the next couple days.

I didn't know of Julie London before, and it's always fun to make discoveries like that, but starting tomorrow I already had planned to start posting some great singers – both male and female – so with that impetus, I'll just get this last jazz musician out there for your consideration.

Other famous sax players in the early 1960s besides Stan Getz also got the bossa nova beat. Here's the Dave Brubeck Quartet's alto saxophone player, Paul Desmond, fronting his own quartet…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFxiOeAC_k8&fmt=18"]Wave Paul Desmond Quartet[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBThbc7hLoA&fmt=18"]Samba with Some Barbecue Paul Desmond[/ame]
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[hungprep]

^ That was Herbie Hancock in the last song.

Also some of the greatest singers of all time either swung with the bossa nova beat, or molded it to their own aesthetic purposes.

From a live TV special on NBC, broadcast in November 1967, Sinatra: A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WzoRh79BzY&fmt=18"]Frank Sinatra + Antonio Carlos Jobim[/ame]


Two more from 1969…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snlSiVofVik&fmt=18"]Desafinado (Out-of-tune) Sinatra + Jobim[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLVkLl-JI2w&fmt=18"]Wave (Vou te contar) Sinatra + Jobim[/ame]
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[hungprep]

^ How about Sinatra, hitting that low note so perfectly every time?

The next two versions of Wave are by the two greatest, past masters of scat (singing, that is) and the third by (arguably) the greatest jazz singer who ever lived…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du9iKpoPiFY&fmt=18"]Wave Ella Fitzgerald[/ame]


^ With Joe Pass (guitar) and Zoot Sims (saxophone)


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqO4IVMQ9gQ&fmt=18"]Wave Mel Tormé[/ame]


^ With Gerry Mulligan (saxophone) and George Shearing (piano)


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y6ih8ST_8Y&fmt=18"]Wave Sarah Vaughan[/ame]


^ Live in Toronto, 1981
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[miaedu]

Astrud & Joao Gilberto - So Nice (aka Summer Samba)

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdl-e-KMLhg[/ame]

 

[hungprep]

^ Bossa nova is the true sound of summer around our house…

But all of the songs/performances I've posted to date (in my driven, single-minded way) were meant to lead to Brazil's most popular singer, ER – Elis Regina – the late Queen of 'Música Popular Brasileira' (Brazilian Popular Music, 'MPB' for short) and, ultimately (maybe tomorrow or Monday), to the single, most popular song in the history of the country, Águas de Março (Waters of March, also by Antonio Carlos 'Tom' Jobim).

First up, though, is her incomparable interpretation of the original, Portuguese lyrics (and unique, internal rhymes and rhythms) of the one song I've been concentrating on most in this thread…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge1fZAjNRAI&fmt=18"]Vou te contar Elis Regina[/ame]
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[hungprep]

^ That was the great Toots Thielemans, playing the harmonica on the preceding song…

I've decided to wrap up my (I hope, not too dryly academic) 'direction' of this thread today, rather than tomorrow (but, as promised, with Elis Regina's sublime voice, singing Águas de Março, a song she and its composer 'Tom' Jobim first introduced on their 1974 album together, Elis & Tom, the release of which, in many ways, signaled the end of the bossa nova era in Brazilian popular music.

As others have already shown, however, while bossa nova may have ceased to be the dominant style of Brazilian popular music after a reign of nearly twenty years, like the samba itself (of which it was a softer-swinging, jazzier variant), it remains deeply ingrained in Brazilian culture, and the great artists that came after – such as Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil – have all paid grateful homage to its enormous, worldwide influence.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaM8eShHs8c&fmt=18"]Samba de uma nota só Elis & Tom[/ame]


(To watch the vid on YouTube, just click the link to the song I put in the top of the video window frame.)


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqK_Gx5mcL4&fmt=18"]Por toda a minha vida Elis & Tom[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp5J3SEzj8I&fmt=18"]Corcovado/Águas de Março Elis & Tom[/ame]
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[miaedu]

Quilomba, o el Dorado Negro - Gilberto Gil

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKJD7Gz59rg[/ame]

 

[hungprep]

^ That song reminds me of the 1959 film that caused bossa nova music to explode (quite literally) in cinémas around the world – Marcel Camus' Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). Here's how it begins, underneath the opening credits – with Antonio Carlos Jobim's drumming A felicidade (Happiness), gradually giving way to Luiz Bonfá's Manhã de Carnaval (Morning of Carnival), as the women dancers (the Greek Chorus since this is the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, transposed to Brazil) weave uphill into the favelas, overlooking Rio de Janeiro…


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KznlNRyjUg&fmt=18"]Orfeu Negro Opening credits[/ame]
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